


Head in the Clouds, Feet Dangling

by TheDreadedSneeb



Category: Original Work
Genre: Daydreaming, Gen, School, mild bullying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 21:41:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1164849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDreadedSneeb/pseuds/TheDreadedSneeb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a short piece I wrote a long time ago about a little girl who spends more time gallivanting about in her mind than she does in the real world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Head in the Clouds, Feet Dangling

**Author's Note:**

> I'd forgotten all about this story. when I rediscovered it, I found it surprisingly charming. I think I may have intended to write more initially, but I don't think it needs it, and my brain is no longer flowing to the story.

The bus screeched to a stop outside my school. I stood up and grabbed my backpack, heading for the door. It was raining again. The ground was already soaked from the storms earlier this week. An inch of water now covered the blacktop and seeped into my shoes. It was freezing. I flipped up my hood and joined the crowd at the door.  
There was nothing like rain for a prelude to an awful day. We had a math test and a spelling test in the schedule, my two worst subjects. My parents were going to be furious when I brought home more F’s for them to sign. Then, of course, I’d have to stay after class next Tuesday to make them up. Which was worse than any other day because Tuesday is the day Mom and Dad take us kids out for a movie. They always leave right after school, so I won’t be able to go.  
I trudged down the hall to my locker and fiddled with the lock. What was my combination? Three-seventeen-then what? I looked at my hand to see if I’d written it on the palm and remembered that I’d taken a shower last night. My palm was blank. I set down my bag. I had to have it on me somewhere. I wrote it down on paper, and… what did I do with it?  
I began fishing in my pockets for it. I found a hair-clip, three safety pins, some old tissues, a pencil stub, and half of a granola bar… no combination. No house-key either. I wondered where that had ended up. I knelt down and opened the front pocket of my backpack, munching on the granola bar. My search produced yesterday’s homework, the key to my sister’s diary, and the crushed envelope holding my lunch money, but again no combination.  
I checked the sides of my shoes, but the rain had smeared the pen marks beyond recognition. I sighed and went to the office to hand in the money. The secretary looked at me pityingly as she accepted the money.  
“Did you forget your combination again, dear?” she asked.  
“Yeah, and I can’t find the paper I had it on either,” I admitted. She wrote it down without having to look it up and handed me the paper.  
“Try not to lose this one,” she said.  
“Okay.” I shoved it into my jacket pocket and walked back to my locker. I picked up the lock and spun the dial. Then I hesitated. Where did I put the com? I just had it. She handed it to me, I grabbed it, I walked out…what did I do with it? I checked my free hand and the outer pocket of my backpack. Come on, think, Mimi! I checked my pockets. It was in my left coat pocket.  
I finally got the lock open, put my coat inside, and went to class. I dropped into the one empty seat, assuming it was mine, and looked at the board. American History. I breathed a sigh of relief and rummaged in my backpack for a pencil. I found one at the bottom. I took out a notebook and began to doodle.  
I was imagining there was a unicorn brushing its nose against my leg. It was appearing on the paper in front of me, slowly but surely. Suddenly something jarred my arm, leaving long streaks through the drawing. The unicorn disappeared. I looked up. The teacher was looking at me waiting expectantly. When did class start? The other students were laughing and making rude comments.  
“Sorry, what?” I asked.  
“I asked you to name the Indian woman who played a big role in westward exploration.”  
Westward exploration? I tried to think. Westward exploration. That was…who? Isn’t India to the east? Did Marco Polo know an Indian woman? No, he explored China. Columbus didn’t know any Indian women. Who is he talking about? Apparently, the teacher took my silence for what it was and asked someone else.  
The kid behind me pushed my shoulder, “Man, you’re stupid. Even I know the answer to that.”  
I ignored him and rotated my paper. The unicorn reappeared, and I began to draw again. I’d just finished and flipped the page when the teacher tapped my shoulder.  
“You’re going to be late for Phys. Ed., Melissa.”  
“What?” I asked, looking up.  
“The bell rang to dismiss class two minutes ago.”  
“It did?”  
“Yes, you need to get your head out of the clouds and pay attention, or you’ll fail this class.”  
I realized that I had been drawing through the entire period. I had no idea what we had covered. The teacher seemed to understand my problem. He wrote down which chapters I should read from the book and tucked the paper into my folder. I thanked him and apologized and went to the gym.  
Seventh grade gym class is an unholy terror. The teacher is a grouchy monster, tired from dealing with adolescents for too many years and cranky from spells of gout. You spend all your time running around and trying to stay away from the super-athletes and populars. Sometimes you play games or sports, which are only excuses to separate the good players from the bad and make the bad ones feel worse. I am a bad player.  
Today we are running the mile indoors because of the rain. I groaned. I am a slow runner, and I tire quickly. We started doing stretches and then got down to business. I jogged, pacing myself, so I wouldn’t die in the first three minutes like I usually did. I was thinking about the Olympics, the races those people run and how fast they go. I started imagining that I am one of them, flying down the track, headed for the finish. I am almost past the one person in front of me. We are side by side. The line is getting closer and closer. The crowd is cheering, on its feet.  
My foot snagged on something and I crashed down on my hands and knees. It hurt. One of the super-jocks had tripped me. People were laughing. I got back up and started jogging again. They stopped laughing, which was weird because it wasn’t a slow-down-and-stop kind of stop. It was the laughing-really-hard-wait-that’s-not-funny kind of stop that happens when someone actually gets hurt badly. The teacher stopped me on the way past and sent me to see the nurse. I didn’t ask why, but I was confused. It wasn’t like I’d hit my head or anything.  
When I got to the nurse’s office, there were people waiting already, so I sat down. The other kids stared at me.  
“Whoa,” one said, “what happened to you?”  
“What do you mean?” I asked back, looking down at myself. Then I realized. There was blood running down my legs from scrapes on my knees. So that’s why they hurt. I went to the sink, soaked a few paper towels, and sat back down. I dabbed at the scrapes and wiped the blood off my legs. Then I set the wet squares on top of my knees and stretched out my legs, leaning back in my chair.  
I put my head back and closed my eyes. There were three butterflies fluttering around my head. Only, if you looked closer, you noticed that they were really little green people with butterfly wings. They each had four arms and two legs and antennas. Their clothing was made from the finest spider web, draping off them like silk ribbons. Tiny bows and poisoned arrows hung at their sides. They were the finest warriors their emperor had to offer, come to make a bargain with me, the queen of the red driver ants. Negotiations for a truce were nearly complete. They would join forces with us, the Rowan Colony, to defend from our mutual enemy, the grasshoppers.  
We ants are fierce warriors, but we are restricted to the ground and have few projectiles. The butterflies are savage in their own right, but they are almost strictly ranged fighters and they aren’t accustomed to ground combat. In short, we are the perfect team. The grasshoppers won’t stand a chance against us. We will destroy…  
“Melissa!”  
I jumped. The nurse was standing right in front of me, looking exasperated.  
“Sorry,” I stammered. “What?”  
“How did you hurt your knees?”  
“Oh, umm, I fell down in gym.”  
“You fell, or you were tripped?”  
“I was tripped, but it doesn’t matter.”  
“You should get the kid who did it in trouble. You’re bleeding for God’s sake. Melissa, I see you in here about once a week, each time because someone made you bleed. This bullying has got to be stopped.”  
I sighed, “Really, it’s no big deal. It’s just a little bit of blood. They’ll stop bugging me sooner or later. They’ll get bored with it and move on.”  
The nurse cleaned out the cuts and put band-aides on them. Then she signed my pass and sent me back to class. The teacher told me that I was excused from running the mile and could just sit on the side for the remainder of class. I was fine with that. I sat down and pulled out my history book, flipping it open to the assigned pages, and began to read.  
I am slouched down in the brush, watching the strange pale men and their camp. They speak an odd language among themselves. They have pale hair and thin beards. Their clothes are many colors, and their weapons made of shining stones. I have never seen such clubs, long and thin, but perhaps the shiny stone is very strong. I must find out what they seek and what they are doing on the tribe’s hunting grounds. Rabbit and deer are plentiful, but we do not share hunting grounds with any but our cousins and allies.  
I have been following them for three sunrises, and they have not detected me. They are not very alert to the forest and the earth. I hope that the spirits will continue to be peaceful and watch over me. The pale men are almost at the border. As soon as they are out of sight from there, I can return to my teepee. I am a great warrior. I have many horses and…  
“Melissa! You need to go to your next class.”  
I jolted back to reality and closed my book on the paper with the assignment. I shoved the textbook into my backpack and wandered to class. I was about to sit when the teacher stopped me.  
“Melissa, you have math this hour, remember?” she reminded me.  
I blinked and thanked her, wandering back out of the room and to my math class. I’m in the stupid person math class. I barely passed math with a D last year. Actually I barely passed all my classes with C’s and D’s last year. I almost flunked the entire grade. I am still behind this year. I sat in my chair just before the bell rang and groaned. I pulled out yesterday’s assignment and handed it up the row. I had attempted the problems, but I knew that most of them were wrong.  
The test was terrible. I was the last one done; reading scatter plots is just too hard. I never remember which axis is which or what they mean. I was hoping I guessed right on at least some of the questions. The bell rang just as I turned in my paper. Heading back to my seat, I grabbed my things and headed for the door.  
“Hey, Stewart, fail again, or did you finally learn how to add?” one of the jocks jeered. That brought howls of laughter from the others. I kept walking.  
I went to my science class and dropped into my seat. We were watching a movie today, thank God, so I didn’t have to answer any questions. The teacher, Ms. Something-or-other, walked over to me and asked about my knees. I explained about getting tripped in gym and going to make a treaty with the butterfly warriors.  
“Did the treaty work out?” she asked.  
“Well, it was working perfectly, driver ants and butterflies are the perfect pairing, but the nurse interrupted before we could take the fealty oaths,” I explained.  
“Why are driver ants and butterflies a perfect pair?”  
“Well, we ants are the perfect ground and close-quarters fighters, but the butterflies specialize in ranged attacks and air strikes. The grasshoppers would have been done for in the face of our combined forces.”  
“You were fighting the grasshoppers?”  
“Both colony and swarm were, but the grasshoppers were the ones to attack first. They were stealing our food supply and our lands, we had to defend it or starve. Luckily, we can eat grasshoppers if need be, but they taste wretched.”  
“Were you the ant queen?”  
“Yes.”  
The other students began to arrive, and the teacher went back to her desk. The movie started. It was about photosynthesis. I sat up straight and tried to focus. A tall man paced back and forth in front of me. I am tied to my chair. The man is holding me hostage. He needs insurance for safe passage out of the country. I work for the president. All he has to do is turn me over to the wrong people and the nation is in jeopardy. He is talking to the president right now, making his demands.  
I can only hope that I will be rescued soon. I am working at the knots, loosening them slowly. If I can get untied I may be able to escape or force him to kill me. Better to die than end up in enemy hands for torture. Dead men tell no tales. He suddenly looks up at me. I freeze, hoping he didn’t notice my arms…  
Something wet hit the side of my face. I blinked. The man was gone. The lights were still off and the person on screen rattled on about stroma. I reached up to touch the wet thing and another one hit the back of my hand. Someone snickered. Spitballs, I realized. I looked back at the TV. The man was back, staring at me intently. I force myself to breathe normally. I don’t know what I’ll do if he approaches me or talks to me.  
He walks over and checks the ropes. He tightens them so that they hurt. Then I feel a sting at the back of my neck. A needle! I struggle, but the ropes stop me from moving. The world starts to spin and white spots fill my vision. There is no pain, so it must be a tranquilizer, not poison. That’s even worse. I fight to stay awake, but the drug is…  
“Melissa. Class is over. Did you catch any of the movie this time?”  
It’s my teacher.  
“The man! Did he escape?” I ask.  
“What did he look like?”  
“Six-foot tall, black hair, buzz cut, wearing black jeans and a green shirt. He was talking to the president on his cell phone when he tranquilized me.”  
“I didn’t see him, so he must have. What about the movie?”  
“Something about stroma.”  
“Good, you heard some of it. These are the chapters you need to read for the information,” she told me, putting a piece of paper into my textbook. She brushed something out of my hair. It was a little white ball. That was funny. I didn’t remember playing with Styrofoam. I got up and headed for the door.  
“You have lunch next,” the teacher called to me when I reached the door. I blinked. Was it really lunch time? I thanked her and went to the cafeteria.

**Author's Note:**

> Any constructive criticism would be welcome. I'm always looking for ways to improve my writing.


End file.
